The Malton School Student News Blog

Category Archives: PDA sessions

The music personal development sessions always have a lot going on and they spend a lot of time rehearsing for the end of term performances.

There are two school bands – Jazz Band and Soul Band as well as Glee Club. The bands performed at the Christmas Concert and Glee Club sang at the carol service in St Mary’s Church, Old Malton.

Christmas Concert

Glee Club at the Carol Service

The musicians also performed at the KS4 Celebration Evening.

I was lucky enough to go along to listen in to some of their rehearsing. There were three singers and about 10 music performers.

Yr 10 Isaac Rice on guitar

One of the biggest gigs coming up this year is that they are playing the main stage on Friday night at Staxtonbury Festival in July, just before they go on their music trip to Barcelona.

The music department have already been on trips to Normandy, the Loire Valley and Lake Garda in Italy playing to audiences in different venues.

I asked Mr Taylor what the best thing about the music department was.

He said: “We all get on together and the students all work hard and have fun making music.”

Year 13 student Ryan Perry said: “The best thing about the music department is the brilliant opportunities we have to get involved in different bands and work behind the scenes when we have events such as the concerts and the school show.”

Yr 13 Ryan Perry conducting

Not only do the bands perform at school, they also perform at outside events like the Malton Food Festival which took place in December.

Ryan’s favourite instrument is the base guitar. This is what they told me, but why not go along to one of their concerts yourself to see what you think!

Since the start of the new school year students have started PDA sessions at Malton School.

Every Thursday I play football which is great fun. Some students do other sessions such as newspaper group, Spanish or another sport like rugby. The sessions are from 3.15pm till 4.25pm. In football our teachers are Mr Cook and Mr Williams and the first thing we always do is a warm up then we doing some training before we start playing a game.

Next term we can choose another session so we get the chance to try out lots of new activities.

As a student I believe that we should embrace out-of-school activities.

Some clubs give you qualifications, skills and things people wouldn’t even know existed. From the DofE to your own personal fitness, people can achieve things that will put them a step ahead of other people (especially helping with CVs later in life).

At Malton School, we started to give people the new opportunity for a very special award called the DofE (Duke of Edinburgh’s award) where there are three awards: Bronze, Silver and Gold.

The DofE teaches you life skills such as first aid, camping/bush craft skills in surviving, communication and public work and much more. Even just one of these is very good on your CV and can definitely help you any job.

Some of the Malton School students who are doing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award

Even if you don’t want to do activities in school, there are clubs out of school such as Cadets which offer same sort of thing – Air, Army and Sea cadets. These are all based around teaching you future skills as well as taking trips abroad and to army bases (depending on which you decide to be in, you could go to an RAF base or an Army base). It gives you a new look at life as well as more friends and confidence to do things you wouldn’t have had confidence in before.

In and out of school there is something for everyone. Sports is popular within and out of school and is excellent for your health, which is always a good thing even if you don’t want to progress further after school. Hockey or football, for example, are good for teamwork skills and co-operation at the same time as having fun!

Anyone who has free time should be encouraged to try new things and be the person you want to be and try things that sound interesting for you.